My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered in Boring, Ore. in 1988. The breeding efforts had as their objective the production of deeply colored Asiatics with a very light to white area in the center of each tepal, suited to forcing into flower out of season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
I achieved the desired objective by intercrossing two unnamed orange Asiatic seedlings, each of which had a much lighter orange area in the center of each tepal. Both of the unnamed seedling parents were produced by me by pollinating an unusual albino-flowered Asiatic mutant seedling (also produced by me and never released commercially) with Lilium `Sunkissed` (unpatented). Although unpatented, `Sunkissed` was a popular garden lily during the 1970's. Two siblings from this cross had orange flowers with very lighly pigmented tepal tips, and these were intercrossed to produce `Orange Flash`. Two other siblings of `Orange Flash` showed its distinctive flower color pattern, but both had distorted flowers.
The flowers of my new lily are characterized by an upfacing to slightly outfacing orientation, large size, and deep orange coloration with a wide white area in the center of each tepal. It possesses unusually strong, stout stems. In addition, the clone possesses to a high degree desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor. The clone is a good grower and propagator, as observed as Boring, Ore.
My new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Boring, Ore. Successive generations produced by natural propagation from bulblets, bulbils, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of my new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.